The types of products to which the present invention relates include baked goods produced from dough pieces having an outer layer of farinaceous dough and a core which may be a dissimilar dough or another material such as a jam, cream, puree, paste, or other extrudable form of fruit, cheese, meat, vegetable, confection or other edible substance. In those products where the core is also a dough, the inner and outer doughs would be advantageously dissimilar in composition so as to produce different tastes, colors, appearances, textures, consistencies, or the like in the inner and outer portions of the baked product. The present invention is particularly useful in producing such baked goods having particulate matter, such as chocolate chips, candied fruit, nuts, raisins, and the like, in the outer portion.
In the past, products having different inner and outer portions have been formed by concentrically extruding an extrudate rope as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,572,259 to Hayashi.
An automatic machine for making filled baked goods is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,196,810 to Roth. In this patent, a plurality of dies dispose flavoring material within a dough. U.S. Pat. No. 3,778,209 to Wallace et al. discloses an apparatus for forming a food extrusion in which an inner meat food is totally enrobed by an outer moldable food by using a co-extrusion nozzle and a pair of augers to force food products through the co-extrusion nozzle from a respective pair of food hoppers. Augers are particularly useful for the extrusion of foods, such as dough, in order to achieve a consistent quality, reliability and high efficiency in the high speed manufacture of snacks such as cookies, chocolate layered foods and the like.
In the manufacture of co-extruded food substances, it is common to require that the outer food substance encapsulates or enrobes an inner food substance. In U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,778,209 to Wallace et al. and 3,249,068 to Gembicki, the enrobing action is obtained by controlling the motion of a plunger or piston used in connection with the feeding of the food material to be encapsulated. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,251,201 to Krysiak, an enrobed food piece is produced with an apparatus that includes specially sequenced feed mechanisms used to co-extrude an inner and outer food product from coaxial dies in combination with a sequence-coordinated iris-shaped cut-off valve that is closely mounted to the discharge ports of the extrusion dies. The iris valve cuts the co-extrusion just at a time when the feed of both the inner filler and outer enrobing foods is interrupted and the space in which the valve acts is essentially filled with the outer enrobing food. This technique appears to depend upon a relatively easy flowability of the outer food substance so as to coat the rear of the inner food while the iris valve is about to close and appears limited in operating speed because the feed of both inner and outer foods must be interrupted for each food piece manufactured.
More recently, relatively high speed methods and apparatuses have been developed whereby an inner dough coextruded with an outer dough is enrobed by severing the outer dough with a blunt severing edge or a severing element which simultaneously draws the outer dough over the inner dough on both sides of a severed element to form a fully enrobed food piece. See, for example, commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 06/507,401 now abandoned.
Commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 630,126, filed July 12, 1984, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,579,744, discloses a method and apparatus which facilitates inclusion of particulate matter in the outer portion of a co-extruded dough rope. The apparatus set forth in that application includes an inner extrusion port through which an inner portion of the extrudate material is extruded and an outer extrusion port. The outer extrusion port has a generally annular extrusion orifice greater in cross-sectional area than the extrusion orifice of the inner extrusion port. The inner extrusion port is recessed from the outer extrusion port by a distance sufficient to allow passage of the outer dough, which contains particulate material, between the ports without agglomeration of the particles. Turbulence is induced in the outer dough for causing the particles therein to penetrate the exterior surface of the outer doughy mass, the turbulence being induced by a substantially sharp circular edge formed by the intersection of a generally annular land surface generally parallel with respect to the axis of the outer extrusion port and an annular beveled surface inclined at an angle with respect to the axis of the outer extrusion port.
According to the method and apparatus disclosed in commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 630,126, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,579,744, the cylindrical extrudate is deposited on a continuously moving conveyor spaced at a distance from the outer extrusion port. The conveyor transports the extrudate material from the extruding station to a cutting station and from there to a baking station.
At a cutting station a coaxial extrudate rope may be formed into a series of discrete items such as cookies each having an inner portion of one material and an outer portion of another material substantially surrounding and enclosing the inner portion. The cutting and formation of the coaxial extrudate rope into the multiplicity of discrete items may be accomplished by a cylindrical cutter member having a blunt circular lower edge by means of which the outer portion of the extrudate material is dragged downwardly toward the plane of the conveyor upon a downward motion of the cutter member. It has been found that waste material accumulates at the cutting station and that the accumulation is exascerbated by a mispositioning of the extrudate rope upon the conveyor so that the extrudate fails to pass directly below the cutter member at the cutting station.
An object of the present invention is to provide an improved apparatus for the coextrusion of a coaxial extrudate rope-like material having an inner portion and a dissimilar outer portion, the improved apparatus resulting in a reduced amount of waste material at the cutting station.
Another, more particular, object of the present invention is to provide such a co-extrusion apparatus in which the mispositioning of the extrudate material on the moving conveyor is decreased, if not eliminated.
These and other objects of the present invention will be apparent from the following description and claims in conjunction with the drawings.